The Liturgical Calendar (or the Church's Year)

"Purple and Green, Red and White....."

With the Liturgical Calendar the children see the importance of preparing for the 3 big feasts of the church:  Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.  They also see how important the "growing time" (i.e. Ordinary Time) is!

Today we unveiled one of the the most impressive works of the Level 1 Atrium:  the Liturgical Calendar, which teaches that Christ is the center of our year and that there are cycles and patterns to our worship.  This particular calendar (made from a sort of masonite material that was just leftover packing stuff from a furniture shipment) is MUCH bigger than I've ever seen.  These are usually the size of a large dinner plate and are usually made of wood.  This just goes to show:  you can make these works with whatever you have handy and modify to suit your group.  The gentleman who made this is a seasoned grandpa, so he made chunkier pieces that are safe both because they are too big to choke on and because there are no pointy pieces.

For single use with just a few children you could make this with construction paper or make necklaces with colored pony beads (thanks to Dominican Sister Mary Charles for the necklace idea!).

Your liturgical calendar needs to have 3 concentric circles.  The outer ring separates the year into the Cycle of Easter and the Cycle of Christmas (the largest rings seen above).  The medium-sized ring should be made of 52 equal-sized wedges (in our design the 3 feasts of the year--Easter, Christmas and Pentecost--become rays that take the place of 3 of those wedges).  The smallest ring defines the seasons:  Advent, the Christmas Season, Ordinary Time, Lent, and the Paschal Season.

Once the wood is cut and primed, you're ready to paint!  

 It's a confusing puzzle to create and to put together, so just keep singing the song to yourself as you go:

"Purple and green, red and white
Are the colors of the year..........
Purple for preparation,
White is for celebration,
Green is the growing time,
Red is for Pentecost."

Paint the Pentecost wedge with red.  Later you can add the dove as the symbol for the Holy Spirit.  Note:  some atria use flames as the symbol for the Holy Spirit.  You just need to be consistent across the works in your room.

I wanted the lettering to look nice, so I used a compass to create a guideline.

I found a pretty font, printed out the words I needed for labeling, wrote them onto my calendar pieces and then went over that with a Sharpie.  These steps took a LONG time of careful concentration!

I also made a control chart by tracing all of the calendar pieces onto an old piece of foam core,  labeling everything and coloring it in.  That way the children can move everything from the puzzle to the control chart and back again. 

So far, the only complaint I've had is that the symbol I painted for Pentecost looks like an airplane instead of a dove!

Lots of focus!

One important thing to point out:  while a clock goes around clockwise, we use this calendar counter-clockwise to remind us that "God's time is not our time."

Many thanks!

Thanks very much to this friend of the Legion of Mary for creating this work!